I'm told the tendency for moderation or closing of questions before anyone has had a chance to reply is a big problem for new comers.

It is, and it's something that the moderators and (ostensibly) the community over there actively encourages, not because of the site's gamification, but because of the search engine focus. I've gotten into a couple debates with mods over this, and related StackExchange problems, and the general response from the mods is "although we do want to help the person asking the current question, it's more important to have a Good Answer(TM) which people in the future can find in search engines" and, to that end, they seek to ruthlessly close any unclear or otherwise "bad" questions before answers are posted, with the intention of first creating a "good" question so that it can receive "good" answers. They don't want the "bad" question answered out of the belief that this will produce "bad" answers (making possibly-incorrect assumptions, etc.).

Of the stacks I regularly visit, the one for role-playing games is probably the worst. Even if a question is from someone clearly completely new to RPGs (so they probably don't even know that anything other than the latest edition of D&D exists) and is using 5e D&D-specific terminology, but they don't explicitly mention "5e D&D", the question will be closed and people will be told not to answer until the OP "clarifies" what system they're asking about, no matter how blindingly obvious the relevant system might be.

They're a great example of how even a good idea, when pursued with too much focus and trying too hard for purity of application, can become horribly, horribly toxic.